It was also the game’s biggest fumble: The singer was riding a steady stream of positive buzz from both her performance in the “Gimme All Your Luvin'” video and her own “Bad Girls” video, which was released the same day and is, at least to this viewer, a better, more inventive clip.

M.I.A. has already proven to us that she can put on an engrossing show without resorting to cheap tricks.

What makes it cheaper is that, all things considered, it wasn’t all that offensive. Which, of course, is the most cunning thing about it. It’s just rebellious enough to color her I’m-at-the-Super-Bowl-ness with a hearty dash of whatever-I’m-still-a-punk-ness, but not offensive enough to actually rock anyone’s moral sensibilities. Really, most people were more alarmed by the ensuing yellow blur than by M.I.A.’s finger-flash.

So, no, it wasn’t really that rude to us viewers. But it was pretty rude to Madonna. It was, after all, Madge’s halftime show. Who was M.I.A. to snatch the headlines by turning her less-than-a-minute with the mic into a postgame conversational centerpiece?

Hopefully, for the sake of her fans (this one included), M.I.A. will get back to winning attention the way she used to: making awesome, head-spinning, genre-spanning music.